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Humanistic learning theory (Kolb's experiential learning cycle (Kolb…

- - - - We have a concrete experience first - we get some kind of feedback from something; we do something and it gives us some response in some way.
        
        Through reflective observation of that process we can start to identify key bits of the process that worked, what is it we learned from that? We can start to form:
        
        Abstract concepts from that experience and apply it to our ow learning.
        
        We apply it to our own experience through active experimentation, we go through the experimentation - having tried something out - provides us with another concrete learning experience.
        
        This brings in a framework of reflective practice - what happened, what did I do, how did it impact on what I learned, hat did I learn from it and can I repeat it again in a different situation, then how did that create a new experience for me in the concrete experience stage.
  - - - Kolb talks about learning styles which is confusing in that context. He suggests we have continuums - we have a perceptual continuum in how we see the world around us. We have a processing continuum - cycles 2 and 4.
        
        We start off with the concrete experience and understanding our feeling from that experience which is the perception of what that experience was about.
        We then diverge that experience into reflective observation and watching through feeling and watching: we feel the experience and watch what happens as a result of that experience. This is why its important when we do reflective writing on the PGCLT that we talk about our feelings when we reflect - what actually happened, how did that experience make me feel? how might it have made the students feel?
        
        Then through that process of watching we then start to assimilate information through thinking about it - we watch what happened and we think about the impact that it had. This is where we think about the so what stage in the reflective thinking model.
        
        We then look at the so what stage - what do I do with that now? this is where the doing process comes in play. Bringing together abstract conceptualisation with active experimentation through doing is the think and do phase which may take time or may be very quick. Need to move through that phase to put what we are thinking into practice.
        
        Finally we have the accommodating phase - perhaps the hardest to explain and understand - this is where we feel and do - by doing something how does that now make us feel? by doing this change do we feel that there is a difference? Do we see that by doing this in this way we have created a new experience - is that different to our original experience?
        
        This learning style is one that one needs to identify with and is perhaps the most current theory of thinking in use in higher education today - certainly very common and something we do a lot. In education models you'll see a lot of cycle models where there is a process of 'do, think, feel, react, create, produce, evaluate, reflect, then back to another experience. Many different models take on board this type of cycle in different ways.
        
        As we move through each cycle we should create a new experience at stage 1 each time we go through the process, or we may find that the experience is repeatable and therefore in the behaviourist approach we may find that we can create a repeatable experience through repetition and doing which creates the same concrete feeling and experience. This is perhaps the training aspect of identifying learning as opposed to the more abstract concept of learning in an academic environment.